Writing For Understanding– Wild Child, From Fall to Winter
Central Idea- What is it I want students to understand and know about the content?
Science Standards - Weather
2nd Grade
  • Standard 2 Objective 3a: Compare and contrast the seasonal weather patterns during the school year.
  • Standard 4 Objective 2c: Identify behaviors and reactions of living things in response to changes in the environment including seasonal changes in temperature and precipitation.
3rd Grade
  • Standard 2 Objective 2b: Predict the effects of changes in the environment (e.g., temperature, light, moisture) on a living organism.
  • Standard 5 Objective 1b: Observe and report how sunlight affects plant growth.
  • Standard 5 Objective 1c: Provide examples of how sunlight affects people and animals by providing heat and light.

Focusing Essential Question-What is it I want students to understand and know about the content?
What adaptations do plants and animals make as seasons change from fall to winter?
Building Content Knowledge-What will I make sure the students know enough about the subject by the end to actually write about it?
  • Foundation
  • Texts
  • Close Reading
  • Text Dep Questions
  • Speaking & Listening
  • Capturing Thinking
  • Monitor Understanding
  • Writers Craft
/
  • They will read Wild Child by Lynn Plourde
  • Read the complete text, then selected pages
  • Pg 3-4, 5-6, what are the animals and birds doing in fall (teacher model finding
the answer)
  • What clues in the text let you know that?
  • Pg 9-10, 11-12 what snacks did Mother Earth give her child? What in the text lets
you know these are fall time treats ? (turn and talk)
  • Pg 15-16, 17-18 What are the child’s pajamas made of? What fall time plants
might actually be described in these pages?
  • Pg 22-23 what words or phrases describe the climate change from fall to winter?
(turn and talk )
  • What can you infer about the mother/child
  • What are the clues from the text? Quick write for two minutes. (share what you
wrote with a partner)
  • Vocabulary – climate, hibernate, migrate
  • Taking notes in a four square chart
  • Dramatize the story by writing a reader’s theater in 3 parts. Narrator part is read
by the teacher, Mother Earth by the girls, and child by the boys. Sticky notes
labeling parts on the first few pages get you into the rhythm of who reads when.
Understanding the Writers Craft- How will I make sure they know enough about the craft of Writing?
Structure-How will the students know how to organize their ideas and construct a piece of writing?
  1. Animals and Bird descriptions
  • Flap, flitter, twitter
  • Skitter, scatter,
Means
  • They are migrating an gathering food
/
  1. Specific plant description
  • Crunchy, munchy,
  • Chewy
  • Plumpy, lumpy, pulpy
  • Snapperly, dapperly, cidery
  • Pucker, smuckery, crimsony
Means
  • Fruits and vegetables are ripe

  1. Non-specific plant descriptions
  • Fiery, flaming reddish,
  • Brilliant, bursting, yellowish
  • Burnt, blistering, orangish
  • Tawny, tarnished, goldish
/
  1. Climate descriptions
  • Blanket of snow
  • Windswept, feezing, frizzling,
  • Frosty caress
  • Freezing, iceberg, crystalish, icicle-ish

Writing / Revising- How will students draft / revise so that their final writing is clearly focused, organized, and developed to show understanding of the central ideas?
  • Merge thinking from completed thinking boxes with the other weather lesson (Maple Hill Farm).
Fill out a Main Idea and Detail Graphic organizer.
Write from the graphic organizer.